Wednesday, May 21, 2008

JEFF PROBST: Three days, nearly 600 entries, well over 100,000 words. Who will earn the title of preposterously magnificent SOLE SURVIVOR? We will soon find out. With me tonight is literary agent Nathan Bransford. Nathan, how does it feel to be sitting here tonight at tribal council?

NATHAN: I'm happy to be here, Jeff. The torches were a nice touch.

JEFF PROBST: This wasn't just any competition for you. What was it like spending three days in the dialogue jungle without speaking to your loved ones, without bathing, eating rats, and drinking copious amounts of bourbon? That had to be difficult.

NATHAN: I'm a fighter, Jeff, and I'm in this game to pick a winner. It was very difficult to choose finalists, and I'd like to thank everyone who entered. This wasn't easy.

JEFF PROBST: What was the most difficult aspect for you?

NATHAN: Context. It was extremely difficult to jump into scenes midway. This was by far the most difficult contest to judge, and I'm sure it was difficult for the writers as well. Some authors spend an entire book building toward a perfect moment of dialogue, and yet in this competition the authors only had 250 words. Not easy at all.

JEFF PROBST: Here's what I don't understand about this. You're a literary agent. It's your job. Why are you complaining? Why should this be difficult for you?

NATHAN: Um.. I'm not.. complaining. You turned hostile.

JEFF PROBST: Do you have the hidden immunity idol?

NATHAN: No.

JEFF PROBST: Then let's get right to tonight's voting. I'll go tally the votes.

First vote: Michele. That's one vote for Michele.

Malika is on her way to Nubia through Egypt, on a journey to regain her rightful place as the daughter of the black female Pharaoh Nikwala after years as a slave to the Greeks. Enroute, she meets Zuberi, a fellow countryman.

“How is the Princess this morning?” Zuberi asked, his face serious but his voice carrying a cheery lilt. She wondered if he overheard their argument.

“Quite well now, thank you Zuberi.”

“Perhaps you should sit.”

“It feels good to be up and about,” she said, a bit more sharply than she intended. He wasn’t going to tell her what to do too, was he?

“My mother used to have a cure for fevers. It was a special soup that made from sheep’s testicles—to give you strength.” His white teeth gleamed in the sun and she was surprised to see he had dimples just below each angular cheek. His eyebrows were raised innocently, but his smile was mischievous.

Malika grimaced, and Zuberi laughed. It was lovely sound, deep and resonant.

“--and a tea infused with hookworm larvae for the fever.”

“Oh, stop!” Malika laughed out loud. She noticed Alexandros glance at her and frown. She ignored him. “Are all the cures in Nubia so…unusual?”

“No, I am teasing just a little bit. Only the most simple farmers still use the hookworm cure. But the soup--” he grinned.

Malika held up her hand. “I’m not quite well enough to hear that again.”

“Ah,” he chuckled, “lucky for you your aunt has made you well again. She is a good and wise woman.”

“Yes, she is.”

“She is fine teacher, also.”

Malika nodded, wondering how much of their conversation he overheard.

“You are learning the power of our people, yes?”

“Yes, but not everyone approves.” She glanced sidelong at Alexandros, who was pacing nervously along the rail as the ship on the horizon grew closer.

“Ah, but he is not Nubian. He cannot understand.”

Second vote: Jeffrey Selin. That's one vote for Michele, one vote for Jeffrey Selin.

The Zodiac and Kirby's experience are legendary -- the motorboat for stalling and Kirby for captaining the craft under duress. Kirby doesn't have the best playthings. Not the kind bought with wealth. They leak oil. They need mending. They are just things he collected along the way.

"Tomorrow," he says. "I need it first thing." Kirby wipes sweat from his high forehead. He has a screwdriver in the other hand. "That one?" he points.

"Oh, yeah," says Braddah. "Dis one ac’ real funny kine."

They're in Kirby's driveway bent over the Zodiac's outboard. Braddah is a thick-skinned Samoan, part Portuguese, part Hawaiian, all local. Just Braddah. His big brown crack is exposed in baggy ass board shorts.

Alan, Kirby's son, circles the driveway on his skateboard. The urethane wheels hum on the blacktop. "Dad. Dad, watch this," he says.

"So I get a new injector?" says Kirby.

"Cool head main ting," says Braddah.

"Dad, watch!"

"Shit," says Kirby.

Alan attempts a daredevil board sport leap. There's air. It ends with a crash to the blacktop. Kirby waits, places a hand on Braddah's shoulder as if to say hold on. "You alright?" says Kirby.

Slowly the boy gets up. "Whatever." He returns to circle the boat and its captain with the Doppler effect of racing wheels.

Kirby watches. "Hey, how old was Mickey when he first tried the waves at Jaws?"

"I suppose." Davie looked at the drill. "Fairy Godmother? Can I drill holes in the doughnuts?"

"Yes dear. If it stops you drilling holes in yourself, go right ahead."

Next vote: emeraldcite. That's one vote michele, one vote Jeffrey Selin, one vote Polenth, one vote emraldcite. One vote left.

“Thanks for the coffee,” Smith said, his voice slight. “You going to have any?”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“A detective that doesn’t drink coffee? Philly never ceases. So, you want to know about it, huh? I guess I should talk about it.” Smith grimaced as he sipped his coffee.

“I just got off work--”

“What time?”

“A little after midnight.”

“That’s late.”

“Not really. ‘We run a tight ship,’” Smith said in a raspy voice, obviously emulating a boss. “I worked until midnight, shut down my station, and headed to the ground floor. I told Frank ‘good night,’ and then left.”

“Who’s Frank?”

“Security at the front door.”

“He see anything?”

“Only thing Frank sees is the Flyers’ score on TV.”

“Then what?”

“I was heading to the garage when I saw the body. At first, I didn’t know it was a body. I mean until I pulled back the sheet and saw the blood.” Smith choked on the hot coffee. “Sorry.”

“What about the body?”

Smith picked up a pen on the table and drew a symbol that Blake didn’t recognize.

“That was carved on his chest. His whole body was shaved, man.”

“Go home and rest Mr. Smith. Call us if you think of anything else. Here’s my number.”

Smith looked up, his mouth formed around a question. But Detective Blake had already left the room.

Last vote: Victoria Schwab.

From a young adult story about the world between life and death, the Shadow Mile:

The shadow woman pointed down the street and spoke.

“It’s a left. Don’t forget.” She said, patting Nell’s shoulder. It was an awkward feeling, not quite solid but certainly thicker than air. “Always a left. Never go right. Right never goes where you want it to.”

Nell nodded slowly. “Right’s wrong. Got it.”

The shadow woman shook her head and the hole where her mouth should be pursed. “No, no. Right’s not wrong. It’s just not right for you.”

“Mildred, you’re confusing her.” Sighed the shadow man. He raised a long shadow hand and pointed.

“At the end of the road, turn left. Straights are unpredictable. They don’t tend to lead you straight to anything.”

“How will I know when I’ve found an Out door?” Asked Nell.

“Don’t worry about that.” Said the shadow woman. “You found an In door. An Out door will probably find you.”

“You’ll stumble upon one, if you’re lucky.” Added the shadow man.

Nell thanked the two, and apologized again for intruding. She took a step, then stopped.

“I’m sorry, but would you mind telling me what this place is called?”

“You don’t know?” Asked the shadow woman. “But…”

“It’s called the Shadow Mile.” Interjected the man.

“Oh,” Said Nell. There was a flicker of familiarity, but then it was gone. “That’s a strange thing to call a place.”

“It’s a strange place.” Said the man.

And since this made nothing much clearer, Nell simply thanked them and turned and, standing very straight, walked away down the shadow street.

JEFF PROBST: We have a tie.

In order to break the tie, please cast your vote for the sole survivor in the comments section of THIS POST. Anonymous votes will not be counted. Please do not campaign for any survivor on the Internet or elsewhere -- let's make this a fair challenge. Voting will close on Friday at 5:00 pm Pacific time.

I was torn between Emeraldcite and Victoria's and had to let my personal preference for YA here break the tie. So my vote is for Victoria. But I'd read either one of these based just on this little bit of dialogue.

Oh, and one more thing. In light of this list of finalists being picked, I think it's important to remember something that BookEnds mentioned after their last contest was finished. I'll quote it here:

(link to original post: http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2008/05/lessons-learned-from-bookends-100-word.html)Clearly a strong voice is important to a successful book, but I’d also like to clarify that just because a voice may not have struck us in the first 100 words doesn’t mean the manuscript is lacking a great one. It can often be something that builds. In fact, I just signed a client who entered one of our contests and didn’t even make honorable mention. But when I read her submission, I totally fell in love with her voice. I love the story and the characters too, but her writing style is really what hooked me. So please don’t be discouraged from submitting based on the contest results. It was a daunting task to judge based on 100 words, and so we had to make our decisions much differently than we might in the submission process.

So just because your contest submission didn't succeed here doesn't mean you should take it to heart.

Both Polenth's and Victoria's pieces drew me in. Finally, I let punctuation and style be my tie-breaker. The persistent dialogue tag errors in the Shadow Mile piece (Original version: "Don’t worry about that." Said the shadow woman. Correct version: "Don't worry about that," said the shadow woman) would drive me berserk within a page, even though the content is very appealing.

Plus, Polenth not only stuck to the word count limit, but used just as many words as were needed (a tight 162).

Michele's writing had me reaching for the next page. For a few minutes nothing else existed - kids, animals, television - typically a chapter or two will pass before I'm "into" a story. Another vote for Michele. Great job Michele!

I vote for Michele. Great concept... a Nubian princess once enslaved by Greeks. How fresh to hear the words of a witty, confident young African woman. And a hint of romance catches my attention. Can't wait to read the rest of the story.

As anonymous pointed out already, Michele's entry exceeds the word limit - in my word counter it had 284 words. That doesn't count the intro para. No doubt it is well-written, but 34 extra words is significant.

I vote for Polenth. Perfect amount of humor and wit - not forced or overdone. Drew me right in. Loved it.

Yeah, sorry. I have to call foul on this. The rule was that the entries were supposed to be 250 words or less. Two of these entries violate that rule. It's not a comment on the quality of their work - but Nathan, when you establish rules and guidelines for a contest, it isn't fair to disregard those rules at the end. It's insulting to the people who worked hard to comply with them. It gives an unfair advantage to those who did not. And I realize that this is your blog and you can do whatever you want, but it reflects poorly on you as a professional.

Hi everyone, thanks for voting. Just a reminder that anonymous votes will not be counted.

On the word count -- in lieu of doing strict word counts I included those with a ballpark range as I was going along, and I figured that people would sort it out with their votes, which looks like what is happening.

I only used 136 words. That leaves me 114 to give away!I'm hereby officially giving 73 words to Michelle.Just cause I like her entry so much and she needed the words more than I did (or could make such nice use of them.)I have 41 left.Any takers?

Let me just further clarify the word count thing a bit, and I regret that anyone is frustrated by this.

This contest took a lot of time to judge. A lot a lot a lot a lot. I wasn't going through individually and counting words. By the time I got to the finalists, I did a once over to see if they were in the ballpark and went based on the writing.

Yes, rules are rules, etc. etc., but partly this is influenced by how I think about word and page count. If I ask someone for a 30 excerpt and they send me 32 pages, I'm not sweating it.

This is a for-fun contest run by a very busy person who maybe got extremely tired thinking about word counting all of the people in the vicinity of the finals to try and eliminate people. Let's have some fun.

I vote for emeraldcite. The dialogue revealed the grittiness of the characters; set against the backdrop of Philly.

Yeah, regarding word count, boy you just can't win, can ya? I must admit I probably spent WAAY too much time shaving off 100 words or so LOL; however, it was a great exercise for my brain, done spur of the moment, yesterday. I have learned a ton in the process, and I thank you:-)

Congratulations to all the finalists! Each of them had something that appealed to me, but I was most intrigued by Victoria Schwab's. It drew me into the story even though it was only a snippet out of context.

For the record, I've never rejected a query solely because it didn't follow a rule.

And BTW, the last two I left out were previous contest finalists. I suppose they should be the ones most frustrated if we were being word count sticklers, but they've already won the prizes at stake and we (and they) all know they're wonderful writers.

Tough vote to cast this time round, Jeff. Nathan is a great competitor (we're still convinced he has the immunity idol).

As difficult as it is to break a tie situation with such great work to choose from, I have to cast my vote for Victoria Schwab. I found the format of the dialogue tags disconcerting at first, but they added to feel of the excerpt. I was hooked and wanted to know more.

I agree on the rules thing . Was it against the rules when George Washington attacked the British on President's Day? Was it against the rules when Bill Bellichik videotaped Nixon during waterspy? Was it against the rules when Johnny Fairplay made a suishi roll without a grain on Hell's Kitchen? Hell no! (apologies to Jim Belushi for murdering his joke).

And let me say again -- previous finalists were the last two I left out. If you're a previous contest finalist and you feel that it was unfair to have been left out because two people went over the word count, contact me via e-mail and I'll send you a free book.

Otherwise, while there were many great entries, I'm sorry to say that other than these two previous finalists the word count didn't affect the contest and the list of finalists. So let's just try and enjoy this.

Anon needs to take a breath and get over it. It's done now and it wouldn't be fair to the 5 finalists to change things at this point.

That said, I get his/her point. Nathan, it's your house, you set the rules and you can change those rules however you like. We can chose to play at your house, by your rules, written in stone, changable or otherwise, or we can chose not to play. But I sincerely doubt that anybody who entered your contest, myself included, thought it was "fun". To those of us who are seeking to be published, it was a chance to win the opportunity to have you, a litery agent, look at our material, and that prize of prizes, ten minutes of your very busy and highly valued time.

I, for one, cut out words and changed sentences, thereby changing their meaning and lessening thier quality, to meet your 250 word requirement. Had I known you would have overlooked a few extra sentences, then I would have deleted with less abandon than I did, which might have made a difference or not.

Maybe next time, you might consider making your rules sound a bit less absolute. Though, in all fairness, you did more or less mention that the rules were subject to your whim.

Yeah, I thought by calling my own opinions feckless and strongly held I made it clear that rules were subject to my own interpretation/things like laziness about word counts.

Anyway, I'll be keeping this in mind in the future. But people, try and take these contests less seriously. They are not what stands between you and publication. They are not do or die. Picking the finalists is a subjective process.

Maybe the real solution is that there should be no prizes in the future. These contests really should not be causing any heartache on either side.

Is there anything that warrants an automatic rejection with you? I know you have your pet peeves, but is there any one thing that you just don't like in a submission or contest entry? You seem to be remarkably broad minded.

Now for the nitpicking to eliminate, because how else to make a choice with comparable entries?

Emeraldcite:

“A detective that doesn’t drink coffee? Philly never ceases…” struck me as exposition (light expo, but looked like too purposeful a set-up for the later “Flyers” line).

Then: “We run a tight ship,’” Smith said in a raspy voice, obviously emulating a boss…” seemed to flip an attitude for someone who has discovered a body. Impersonations in that scenario are low on my reality-check list. But hey, I’m being picky; it was still a very strong piece.

Polenth:

I only have one objection to this very delightful excerpt, but it was jarring to me: "I won't die. My mind isn't bound to my physical form. This will prove my independence from mortal flesh!" Sounds lifted from a thespian doing a cold read instead of from a character that I by inference, am assuming is younger (e.g. diminutive Davie instead of David, Fairy Godmother, poppet, your mother…etc.)

Selin and Michele:I’d probably like both of these fine efforts in a novel but the excerpts for purposes of what I was personally expecting in this contest were too loaded with supporting action to gain my vote. (as if my vote matters—just voicing my picky opinion).

Victoria:

Last one standing. Verging on supporting action overload but she found the line without crossing. Clever interplay—gets my vote!

Yes, I might request more (although I will add in case people are still distressed that I also request to see more when people query me directly).

anon@11:29-

I can't really afford to have automatic rejects, except for genres I absolutely don't represent. People can mess up my name, they can begin with rhetorical questions... I'm still going to try and give them a fair shake.

I don't recommend that people just break the rules willy nilly, but I'm also very forgiving about things like typos and some rule-breaking. I don't think carelessness helps your odds, but there are very few automatic nos.

Nathan said: Maybe the real solution is that there should be no prizes in the future. These contests really should not be causing any heartache on either side.

Or maybe the prize could be something other than a partial critique. There is this obvious sense of desperation in the writers community. You sweat for months, YEARS on these novels, and then you pray. You beg. You hope. You wait weeks. Months. Years. Sometimes you wait longer than it took you to actually pen the damn thing. You say to yourself, "If I could just get an agent to read it....!!"

And there lies the rub. People feel like the one page query / five page writing sample is stifling their talent. They feel sure (me included, all the time) that if they could just get someone to read their work, their undeniable talent would be recognized. There are people paying THOUSANDS of dollars on the Brenda Novak Diabetes auction site to get an agent or an editor to read and critique their partial. Thousands! And while the money is going to charity, you know some of those writers are seeing this as a way to finally (FINALLY) get something read. The charity is a nice sideline, but they're not putting all that dough on the line to get a warm feeling inside. Let's all be honest.

You put an enviable prize out there, Nathan. You did it out of the goodness of your heart, and you're to be commended. But just because you see it as the reading and critiquing of a partial, as a "just for fun" contest, you've got a lot of desperate writers on this side of your blog, seeing a two day contest wherein they might finally, agonizingly, get the chance to have an agent read something. In the face of waiting eight weeks to get a rejection letter, or biting your nails for three months on a partial just to get a form rejection, seeing this contest as an opportunity is going to bring out the tooth and nail of every writer, especially if they think someone has an unfair advantage.

But let's all realize: an extra few words didn't win this contest. Great dialogue did. And Nathan had to judge six hundred entries in forty-eight hours. Just because you're not a finalist doesn't mean you suck.

Maybe the real solution is that there should be no prizes in the future. These contests really should not be causing any heartache on either side.

Removing the prizes won't work. In the days when I ran roleplaying plots, any plot with large numbers of people would get complaints. These were events with no prizes, winners or competition. Someone will always find something to complain about. There isn't a way to please everyone.

The upside is that most people enjoy events/competitions most of the time. They might not be as vocal as the complainers at the time, but they'll be the ones talking about it positively in six months time.

All of the finalists did a great job! The two best, IMO, are Michelle and Jeffrey Selin.

Of these two, I select Jeffrey Selin as the winner for a couple of reasons. First, he's juggling more than two speakers, which is much more complicated that keeping two speakers clearly delineated. And second, he pulls off having a character with an accent. Great job!

re anon @9:45 - "I'm sorry to hear that Victoria's losing votes for dialogue tags. The propriety on those can be pretty subjective."Really?

I mean, I know that there are different camps regarding the presence of quotation marks, and I can see the artistic value in both, but with Victoria's entry, the style just looks plain incorrect.

I apologize if I'm coming across rudely, I really don't mean to. I know I make mistakes too and I actually really enjoyed her entry, but my assumption was that Nathan included it because it was so good *despite* the errors.

But your post makes me think that it really is supposed to be that way, which is something brand new to me. Is that a style some people prefer to the traditional (to my mind) way of using dialogue tags? Learn something new every day!

and the heady possibility that we will have been, if not discovered at last, at least awarded the chance to have possibly given you a chuckle or gotten an invisible pat on the back from you to keep on writing.

Don't sweat the complaining. You chose five great scenes, and after all, you're the one with the job as a literary agent, so clearly you know more than the rest of us about what works the best. Instead of complaining, we should be reading through all of the entries to learn from other writers as well as the ones you selected.

In regards to the word count issue, I think that many of us went nuts trying to use a piece that fit the 250 word limit, but that is because we're all used to agents out there who aren't as kind and forgiving as you are.

I'm sure you're aware of this, but there are agents out there who will throw out queries or submissions because of something as simple as a word count, and even if they didn't, as writers struggling to get published, or as brigid said, just to have someone read our darn work, many of us work our tails off to follow the guidelines set by each agent. We're so used to being told all the things that writers do that drive agents crazy (something as simple as putting "I look forward to hearing from you soon" at the end of a query), that many of us have done exactly what Miss Snark told us not do: OBSESS OVER EVERYTHING! It's difficult to quit obsessing when truthfully, if we want to comply with each individual agent's wishes and preferences, it does feel as if we do have to obsess a bit to get it just right.

At the end of the day though, as Snark said, good writing trumps all. Perhaps that is what we should remember when we're querying or simply entering blog contests: just submit good writing, which is what the five nominees did.

The contest idea was great, and I'm thankful that you were willing to do it in your spare time. I'm sorry if the comments have troubled you because you were only trying to do a good thing which was supposed to be fun, and it has been! I enjoyed reading the five nominees you selected, but it was also great to read all the entries. There were many scenes I wanted to continue with, and it really made me see just how many great writers there are out there. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to put our stuff out there for others to read, and congratulations to all of the nominees.

Second place(and very close it was) goes Victoria Schwab. Part of what prevented me from putting it first were the incorrectly punctuated tags. “It’s a strange place,” said the man, not“It’s a strange place.” Said the man.

About the word count, neither a complaint nor a thumbs-up, but just something I noticed while working on my entry. Which was: in the WHOLE frigging book in which that dialogue appears, I haven't even come close to putting in so much time and effort on any other (eventually) 250 words.

What resulted wasn't perfect. But man, was it better. I don't know if I have the gumption to apply the technique to the other 120K words (or however many it is). But I do wonder if being disinclined to tackle that is a bad sign for a writer.

Oh, btw, also wanted to mention: I went back to Donald Maas's Writing the Breakout Novel to see what he had to say about dialogue; I couldn't remember. No wonder: as far as I could tell on a quick skim-through, he didn't have anything at all to say about it!

Victoria Schwab's Shadow Mile - it did everything a sequence of dialogue should. It propelled the story forward, engaged the reader into the world being created, and gave each character a different voice at the same time.

(Polenth was my second choice, and very close at that. He managed to say a lot about the dynamics of the relationship and the world oof his characters without blatantly pointing it out in bold letters). He said very little but what he said told much more than just doughnut holes and drills. It reminded me very much of the dialogue in To Kill a Mockingbird - which says a great deal about something else without ever addressing it so point black (I am thinking of the scene between Scout and Francis in particular at her aunt's house. They start about boys should/shouldn't be cooking and then trancends into a very serious (but never openly addressed topic) of Atticus and the trial).

I can understand you giving a word limit and then fudging it a little. It's probably more of a guideline than anything else, meant to keep people from submitting entire chapters.

I think it's great that you give everyone these opportunities to compete and show off their wares. People should stop complaining and be more appreciative of what you do - provide a wealth of information, tips and witty insight. You're one in a million.

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